GW2 Thief Discussion

in process of updating this post to be less-shitty...give me a while

I want this thread to be a respectable place to hold discussion about GW2 thieves. so im going to try to dig up previous good conversations and post links to them. after that i would like any posts anyone finds useful or feels would be useful to link to the OP to be asked to be linked. just PM me if a discussion is good and ill edit in in

TEMP: please help scan through the thread... i really dont want to dig through 74 pages

also... try to focus on serious talk. if this thread becomes "lol you look up stuff on MMO champ? you bad" then I'm going to destroy you all...slowly... by making you bleed out through where your toenails used to be.

Stuff you should probably know:
Initiative regens at a rate of 1 init every 1.67 seconds
Breaking stealth gives you "revealed" for 3 seconds preventing further stealth
The air burst on shortbow will shoot out farther if the projectile is high up and clump more together if low to the ground, useful for hitting the same target 3 times

/Blinding Tuft/Throw Feathers: blinds enemies and stealths you. use it for stealth skills. they are awesome. this is pretty much the default steal item. You will find this a lot.

Eat Egg: it heals you. more importantly it restores 10 of your initiative. you get the most gain when you use it at 0-1 init since it has a 1 sec cast time

Consume ectoplasm: it gives you 1 stack of all boons. can be saved for when you need to take a hit or two since it will give you both aegis and protection along with regen. Use it BEFORE you're in deep shit

Relatively useful combos you should memorize:

WATER:always try to finish a combo on water. it always heals. Whirls like death blossom and dagger storm will heal your buddies, leaps like heartseeker will heal yourself

SMOKE: shooting any projectile will blind. if you head shot through it you will block up to 2 attacks, the daze will interrupt and the blind will stop the next attack. leap onto it to stealth yourself and follow up with a stealth move (heartseeker then backstab)

ETHEREAL:Leap to give chaos armor to self to punish fast attackers. Projectiles (unload is good for this) will stack confusion to punish things attacking your buddies.

LIGHT: since you have no cooldown on your skills it can be better for a thief to activate light combos. leaping will give retaliation. if your group is condition stacked try to whirl

DARK:projectiles will give you life steal. if you're running pistol pistol drop shadow refuge and sneak attack then unload through it for copious amounts of heals. make sure you'll be able to do the unload once you come out from sneak attacking since refuge doesnt last long

POISON: shortbow thieves can blast their poison fields, it helps to be close to it.

FIRE:leaps will give you a sexy fire shield as per the elementalist skill. Shortbow's blast is easily spam able to stack might even more

LIGHTNING: you can leap into this to daze your opponent giving a dagger mainhand additional control

Ranges:
Units of range in GW2 is in inches. problem is its usually easier to see the world in...shall we say... larger increments.
so he's a few nifty ranges and their conversions...

/ - used to denote dual wield configurations, the weapon on the left is the MH and OH is the right example S/P would be sword pistol; - used to denote a second weapon set. example S/P;D/D means sword pistol and dagger dagger

Skill icons from http://wiki.guildwars2.com We love the wiki, love it back, help support it and update it or baby asura WILL Steal your underpants

He shows off a decent amount of abilities. He speaks a different language, but he still mouses over the tool tips before he uses the ability and in full screen the picture is clear enough to read what it does.

I really like the dual pistol & dagger + pistol set up. Somewhat leaning toward a Thief in place of Warrior lately. Seems like Thieves are a condensed Assassin, and I enjoyed the high mobility playstyle in Factions.

I'm really liking the thief because of it's ability to escape combat, which a lot of the other classes don't seem to have that luxury save maybe the mesmer. If I go thief I'll probably be dual dagger/dual pistols, Maybe dual swords in place of daggers, but leaping death blossom seems too cool to pass up.

1) Enemies do not autoface. NPCs will autoface after they finish the attack animation
2) The Thief videos imply that is correct. NPCs will not reset when you stealth.

I've seen a few videos of enemies auto-facing. Is this a bug? I was hoping that there wouldn't be auto-facing, and I was disappointed a little bit when I saw a video depicting it. I feel like I remember them stating that it was still buggy, but I don't know if I'm just imagining that or not.

I've seen a few videos of enemies auto-facing. Is this a bug? I was hoping that there wouldn't be auto-facing, and I was disappointed a little bit when I saw a video depicting it. I feel like I remember them stating that it was still buggy, but I don't know if I'm just imagining that or not.

I'm really liking the thief because of it's ability to escape combat, which a lot of the other classes don't seem to have that luxury save maybe the mesmer. If I go thief I'll probably be dual dagger/dual pistols, Maybe dual swords in place of daggers, but leaping death blossom seems too cool to pass up.

I've seen a few videos of enemies auto-facing. Is this a bug? I was hoping that there wouldn't be auto-facing, and I was disappointed a little bit when I saw a video depicting it. I feel like I remember them stating that it was still buggy, but I don't know if I'm just imagining that or not.

I'm really liking the thief because of it's ability to escape combat, which a lot of the other classes don't seem to have that luxury save maybe the mesmer. If I go thief I'll probably be dual dagger/dual pistols, Maybe dual swords in place of daggers, but leaping death blossom seems too cool to pass up.

^ Yea, that sounds pretty fun. I enjoy vanish mechanics as I like to 'PULL EVERYTHING', hehe. Will say I am a little dismayed at no perma stealth though.

The moment you "vanish" enemy will attempt to return to his post and then begin to regain % portion of his heatlh each second(maybe half a sec not sure), there is no evade kind of mechanics or insta full hp you know from WoW. You can engage enemy on his way back or any time during his healing process without any problems, this also allows for some nice kitting possibilities